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[a]All things came to be through him,
    and without him nothing came to be.(A)
What came to be through him was life,
    and this life was the light of the human race;(B)
[b]the light shines in the darkness,(C)
    and the darkness has not overcome it.

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Footnotes

  1. 1:3 What came to be: while the oldest manuscripts have no punctuation here, the corrector of Bodmer Papyrus P75, some manuscripts, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers take this phrase with what follows, as staircase parallelism. Connection with Jn 1:3 reflects fourth-century anti-Arianism.
  2. 1:5 The ethical dualism of light and darkness is paralleled in intertestamental literature and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Overcome: “comprehend” is another possible translation, but cf. Jn 12:35; Wis 7:29–30.